Ann (left) and Pauline Leech as children
Pauline Leech 1917–1994
Eldest daughter of Ernest and Mary Leech, Pauline was educated at Withington Girls’ School and the Association for the Education of Women (now St Anne's College), Oxford. She worked at Bletchley Park during the Second World War and was employed as Assistant Librarian at Chetham's Library from 1946 until 1973, finishing her career at the Manchester Royal Infirmary Library. The Library holds around fifty of her personal journals all carefully written in her tiny, characteristic hand beginning in 1929 and continuing until her death.
Ann Leech 1919-2009
Youngest daughter of Ernest and Mary Leech, Ann was educated at Badminton School and Girton College, Cambridge. At Badminton she started school on the same day as the young Iris Murdoch and became close friends with her, an association which they maintained into old age. She was also at school with Indira Gandhi, and followed her political career with interest, collecting many articles and cuttings about her. She devoted the greater part of her adult life to a career in Housing Management, with a special interest in homeless mothers and children.
Ernest Bosdin Leech, his wife Mary, and children Pauline Mary and Ann Bosdin captured at an unknown railway station in the early 1920s
Mary Leech appears to have kept every single scrap of communication with her daughters Pauline and Ann from a very young age, and the three evidently remained very close for the duration of their lives. There are several boxes of letters between the three women, which are particularly frequent during their university years and the period of time that Pauline spent at Bletchley Park.
Many parents keep examples of their children’s drawing and writing but in the context of a family which throws little away the juvenalia of Pauline and Ann Leech is particularly touching.
All the Leech family had a very high, idealised view of childhood and kept all sorts of things produced by their children in addition to their diaries: locks of hair, drawings and sketches, handwriting exercises, party menus, plays and stories. The selection shown here includes Pauline’s first published work, a story in the children’s magazine Fairyland Tales from April 1927 when she was ten years old.
At Badminton, Ann Leech struck up a close friendship with the young Iris Murdoch, who like herself had won a scholarship to the school. As young girls they evidently spent a good deal of time in each other's company and exchanged letters and cards well into old age.
Ann (right) with Iris Murdoch (centre) and another friend
Ann (left) and Pauline photographed in their twenties
During the Second World War Pauline Leech was employed at the Government Office at Bletchley Park. She arrived on the 25 August 1942, writing to tell her parents that she was staying in lodgings at Prince Albert Inn, Old Bradwell, about eight miles from Bletchley, and that she had signed the Official Secrets Act. From then on she maintained a silence about what she was doing and Ernest commented that ‘like a wise woman she says nothing about her work'.
The work that Pauline did at Bletchley may now always remain a secret, but her leisure activities are recorded in a series of quarterly diaries interspersed with bus tickets and pressed flowers, covering her time at the Government offices. Closely written in pencil, the diaries are full of trivia, mainly about the sheer tedium of her work, which she considered a waste of human energy, and about the people she worked with.
Pauline and Ann Leech kept and archived many diaries, commonplace books and loose-leaf notes throughout their lives. They had a rich cultural life and seldom missed a theatre production, concert of music, exhibition or lecture that was taking place in or around their home town of Manchester.
In addition they travelled frequently around the UK and occasionally abroad, collecting and retaining souvenirs, programmes, tickets and information from their numerous outings and trips, as well as the bus, train, tram and trolleybus tickets used to travel to and from their destinations.
Pauline and Ann were enthusiastic and diligent correspondents and the collection includes many boxes of letters, postcards, birthday and Christmas cards received by them.
Ernest Bosdin Leech aged 66 with his daughters Pauline, then 24, and Ann, 22, on the steps outside Chadlington House in 1941. Pauline can be seen holding an assortment of the stuffed animals which remained precious to the sisters well into old age.